A new white paper is now available from our web site: Back-up & Recovery in a Virtual Iron Environment

As the title implies, this white paper discusses backup and recovery of virtual servers, specifically those in a virtualized environment using Virtual Iron, and provides a high-level overview of Virtual Iron’s server virtualization technology and the methods that can be employed for data backup and recovery.

Click here to register for and to download this new white paper.

In Virtual Iron, it is easy to mount an ISO from within any of your virtual servers. In Virtual Iron, there is a feature to map ISO files into a virtual server so that they will show up as a "Virtual CD-ROM" within a running your virtual server.

To utilize this feature copy ISO files to the Virtualization Manager server and place them in the VirtualIron/nbd directory.
Windows: c:\Program Files\VirtualIron\nbd
Linux: /opt/VirtualIron/nbd

In addition to this feature, there are other tools, such as Microsoft's Virtual CD-ROM, that you can run within any virtual server that allows you to mount ISO's as a virtual device.

Virtual Servers running Linux can mount an ISO using the mount command
mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/iso

Note that ISO's can not be added or removed from a running virtual server.

See more tips and tricks in our KnowledgeBase.

Earlier today, we announced with FalconStor a combined solution that will "improve data center resource management by increasing utilization of existing physical resources, optimizing virtual infrastructure performance through real-time data migration, and delivering more cost-effective and reliable high availability and disaster recovery."

“The combination of Virtual Iron and FalconStor delivers comprehensive and easy to use virtual infrastructure and data protection capabilities,” said Mike Kelson, Technical Director at Atlanta Technology Ltd., a UK-based hosted service provider. “Virtual Iron’s LiveMigration provides transparent virtual machine mobility that allows us to perform no-downtime maintenance. FalconStor’s equivalent storage migration capabilities allow simple and seamless movement of virtual machines between storage platforms. The combined efficiencies and advantages translate directly into increased flexibility and better performance for our customers.”

Click here for the full announcement.

I was reading this article at Sys-Con about how Vanderbilt University is using server virtualization to save energy and felt this paragraph really drives the point home:

It's carpooling for computers, and its impact at Vanderbilt is just beginning. It's a growing trend in the industry as demand for computer power continues to increase, and Vanderbilt is helping to lead the way among the university community.

The emphasis is mine but that phrase really does get the concept across.

The full article is here, which goes on to discuss Vanderbilt's results:

In the past year, ITS officials estimate that Vanderbilt began saving 20,575 watts per hour because of server virtualization for 35 percent of the servers they manage. Efforts are underway to increase that to 50 percent soon, and 75 or 80 percent as time goes on.

This week's webcast, Building a Virtual Infrastructure with the Latest in Blade Server Technology, which we co-hosted with HP is now available for on-demand viewing here.

Webcast description:
Server virtualization has quickly become a key area of investment for IT organizations worldwide. Its well-documented benefits involve minimal risk and provide a rapid payback. The clear return on investment combined with a broadening set of virtualization use cases has created the potential for mainstream customer adoption. This Webcast will look at some of the emerging hardware and software solutions and how they are fundamentally changing the economics of virtualization - facilitating dramatic gains in price performance and enabling the benefits of virtualization for a whole new set of users and business applications.

Presenters:
- Mike Kendall, HP ESS Solution Builder Program, HP
- Mike Grandinetti, Chief Marketing Officer, Virtual Iron Software

This webcast covers:
- New advanced virtualization software tools priced for mainstream adoption
- The latest x86 server and processor technologies ands how they are changing the price/performance equation for users
- Expanding use cases such as rapid provisioning and business continuity that not only reduce costs, but also increase flexibility and better align IT with the business
- The impact of virtual infrastructure management and mobility
- Centrally managing virtual computers and physical servers
- How companies such as Priceline.com and PGA Tour SuperStores are implementing and benefiting from these technologies today

If you have any experience virtualizing SQL server or are interested in doing so, check out this thread on the Virtual Iron forums:

"I have 2 SQL 2005 servers that are running under Virtual Iron now as well as a backend Exchange 2003 server and have not had any problems with any of them. I set up the servers primary (C: Drive) using disk space from a Virtual Disk Pool and then I assigned each of the SQL servers a D: and E: Drive using RAW storage from my iSCSI San. This is also the same method that I used for Exchange."

Network World has an article posted about cooling your data center with efficient storage. The article is originally from their Storage Alert Newsletter.

Of course, saving energy and cooling down the data center is one of the main reasons people are looking at Virtual Iron and server virtualization in general. The article notes:

So that's why all the focus has been on server consolidation - this is one of the reasons the whole virtualization space is white hot because customers are able to get rid of large numbers of discrete servers and consolidate them down onto fewer devices.

Virtual Iron 4.2 is now available. Here is what's new:
• VS Tools support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 32-bit and 64-bit & Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 32-bit and 64-bit.
• Multi-pathing for virtual server Ethernet to support business continuity and redundancy.
• Substantial improvements to disk performance.
• LiveSnapshot, which provides logical disk and virtual server snapshots for hot backup and patch management. These capabilities enable off-loaded, space efficient, and no-downtime backups on live virtual machines running in production and development environments.
• The ability to reboot virtual servers without the Virtualization Manager running.
• Support for network-based CDROM ISO files, which can now be used as data disks in addition to boot disks.
• The packaging of VSTools as an ISO, which appears to the administrator as a virtual CD ROM

The SearchCIO Newsletter features an article this week called "Server consolidation is still more physical than virtual." The major point of the article is that consolidation through virtualization is growing more common, but it still isn't as popular as physical consolidation.

I don't disagree with this. After all, it has been quoted that only about 5% of the virtualization market has been tapped, but certainly more consolidation is being done than just that 5% (consolidating two or three old servers onto newer ones, simply moving servers from multiple locations to a single location, etc.).

Of course, virtualization greatly helps with the consolidation process and can help you consolidate more. A sound consolidation plan would include both physical and virtual (see our Emanuel County School District case study for a good example of this).

eWeek's Channel Insider posted a very positive review of Virtual Iron 4.2:
Adopters will find setting up Virtual Iron straightforward; an included quick start guide speeds through the basic elements and offers valid recommendations when it comes to “networking” nodes and even covers basic concepts, such as network cabling. The idea here is to make it difficult for anyone who follows the documentation to muck up an installation.

and

Volumes could be written about the product's options and capabilities and most solution providers would be best off to download and experiment with a trial version of the product to make sure the feature mix will meet their needs. That aside, solution providers will find the product stable and should not come across any significant bugs.

Click here to read the full review.

Byte and Switch has an article up discussing how "virtual environments share all the data protection requirements of their original physical counterparts, including SAN connectivity, and a growing number of suppliers aim to help."

The article also discusses recent announcements in the storage virtualization space.